The modern communications era has brought about a tremendous expansion of wireline and wireless networks. Computer networks, television networks, and telephony networks are experiencing an unprecedented technological expansion, fueled by consumer demand. Wireless and mobile networking technologies have addressed related consumer demands, while providing more flexibility and immediacy of information transfer.
Current and future networking technologies continue to facilitate ease of information transfer and convenience to users. Due to the now ubiquitous nature of electronic communication devices, people of all ages and education levels are utilizing electronic devices to communicate with other individuals or contacts, receive services and/or share information, media and other content. One area in which there is a demand to increase ease of information transfer relates to the delivery of services to a user of a mobile terminal. The services may be in the form of a particular media or communication application desired by the user, such as a music player, a game player, an electronic book, short messages, email, content sharing, etc. The services may also be in the form of interactive applications in which the user may respond to a network device in order to perform a task or achieve a goal. The services may facilitate output of audio enabling a user to listen to the audio from a communication device such as, for example, a mobile telephone, a mobile television, a mobile gaming system, etc.
Currently, when listening to surround sound audio, a user may want to manipulate the audio signal the user is listening to. For example, the user may want to increase the loudness of the audio objects (e.g., audio signals) that are disturbed by background noise (e.g., of the local listening environment) coming from the same spatial direction(s). As another example, the user may want to increase the loudness of audio objects that are most interesting to the user (for example, such as in a teleconference the most important speakers or the speakers that address issues of the most interest to the user), or that simply have too low of a sound volume. In an instance in which an event in the listening environment occurs suddenly and requires the user to pay attention (e.g., a person enters a room), the user may want to temporarily lower the sound volume of the audio object(s) located in a direction while leaving other audio objects intact, thus allowing the user to continue listening without interruption. For example, during a teleconference the user may want to quickly re-position some audio objects for increased clarity (e.g., move the audio objects further away from each other or from disturbing local noise sources around the user). As another example, in an instance in which a user listens to music, the user may want to modify the characteristics of some audio objects to enhance the listening experience.
Object based surround sound may enable rich manipulation of an audio scene since each audio object may be individually manipulated. However, currently the problem is that there are no suitable user-friendly interfaces/methods for such manipulation. At present, manipulation requires the user to be visually connected with a portable device (e.g., that the user is using for listening) which may make the manipulation cumbersome, non-inviting and slow, and it also may effectively prevent new applications and systems (involving such manipulation) from emerging. As such, object based surround sound may be unable to be utilized to its fullest potential unless efficient and easy-to-use methods with natural interaction are developed for manipulating surround audio.